For a while, I was sort of with the GB crew: the game (which I have inexplicably bought on Steam, Switch AND Xbox, despite not liking until 20 hours into the Xbox version) is weird. It starts INCREDIBLY slowly with what could be described as a tutorial for, man, who even knows how many hours, until it opens up. Within that time, it gives you very little direction at all. While I understand the appeal of this, it was frustrating for me. Not in a way that made me think that the game was bad but, it was a weird way for my brain to process the Metroidvaniasouls amalgam that it was. It just had a VERY slow ramp at the beginning met with little reward (or at least, reward that made sense most of the time) and on top of that the movement abilities were doled out at such a slow pace (at least to me, as I wandered all over the place).

So, the look, music and feel are all top notch, and thus I decided I would definitely dig in this time and really do it. And boy, it's a great damn game. Challenging and fun and only occasionally making me want to launch a controller across the room (looking at you Watcher Knights), and with a reserved story that I think is both well told and interesting. I'm happy I bought it three times, sorry it took me so long to finally push through to where I liked it (although, as has been stated before, it probably SHOULDN'T take as long as it does to get into Hollow Knight). I guess the point of this thread is, how many people here have played it, did you stick with it, do you like it, and do you think it is every bit the slow burn that I think that it is? I know that there is a segment here that is rabid about it (the comments anytime it is brought up on anything show that) but otherwise I feel like it isn't talked about a lot in comparison to other games.

Final thing: boy the soundtrack is just some of the best shit ever. The Greenpath in particular is just amazing.

EDIT: also, mods, I'm sorry, I meant to post this in the Hollow Knight forum, apologies.

Its a fantastic game. Glad you like it =)

That was my impression as well. Didn't really like it for the first few hours, grew to love it once you get a bunch of mobility options. I do think it starts to drag near the end though.

@ichthy: Not for nothing, but your post count is very good right now.

I guess the point of this thread is, how many people here have played it, did you stick with it, do you like it, and do you think it is every bit the slow burn that I think that it is?

Let me preface this by saying that this is a lovely game and I can totally see why people are really into it. Alas …

I fell off it after about 20 hours with just too many dead ends to keep track of and no clue how to make meaningful progress anymore. While it is nice that you always have a whole bunch of possible areas to check out, this is only a pseudo-freedom when you are hitting walls in most of them, sometimes in form of a boss you are cleary unable to defeat yet (though I guess some of them are DLC bosses, there is no way to know).

Combined with the overall lack of direction I fell into in a gameplay rhythm of just going where I have not been yet and hoping to find something there. Which is just not fun given how sprawling the map gets and how tough some of the roaming enemies are.

Also, those annoying doors locked with keys (as opposed to ability/equipment based ones). I believe this is one of the cheaper ways to gate progress in Metroidvania titles and this game has a bunch of them. Most of the time you get no clue where the key might be located or what sort of key you are looking for, so either you happen to have accidenly found it already or it's backtracking time (or time to check out an online guide, I guess). In some cases you can simply buy the opening item, but how would I know this? In fact, "How was I supposed to know this?" is pretty much how I would describe my experience with the mid-game progress.

Also, while I think that the map stuff is fine, there are far too few benches and fast travel points. This might be overly cynical, but I believe that this is a deliberate choice designed to pad out the game with lengthy backtracking just to be able to save your progress (if you happen to progress, anyway).

All in all, this game might just not be for me. I simply appear to lack the patience.

I bought it on Switch last August and liked it from the start. I've spent more than 80 hours on it and completed 80%. I bought it again on Xbox and have spend 6 hours on it and I love it. It's my favourite game this year without contest. I'm usually not a great fan of the "metroidvania" genre but its Dark Souls vibe appeals a lot to me. Also, I don't understand the critics about the maps as I've found the cartographer was fairly easy to locate in each zone. What I really appreciate is after playing on Switch and having a really hard time (I was not really good) with the bosses and the platforming now that I'm playing again on Xbox I can beat the bosses first try and the platforming isn't so tough anymore.

@the_atomic_dumpling: Hey duder, yours is kind of an opinion I was looking for because of how long it took me to love the game. Although, now I'm a little worried since I'm not sure where I am in comparison to where you were haha.

With regards to the map and, to lesser extent the fast travel, it does have options that make it easier. It isn't an excuse and I agree with you as a whole...early on it feels designed to just make me walk from point A to point B.

@tatsuyarr: I don't disagree with you about the maps per se, but...for one of these style of games to have no map or no compass right away, i get why it could be off putting. Even as I warmed to the game the need to find Connifer in areas just to unlock where I had been was irritating. It's one of the areas where I think the Dark Souls aspect doesn't translate well. Nobody in a Metroidvania wants to endlessly wander with no sense of where they are or have been.

Don't get me wrong, I think the game does it very well. I just can also see why it's a turn off too.

I think what ultimately turned me off is that I was waiting for the funnel to narrow at least a tiny bit. I clearly knew what the next overaching goal was (a few masks displayed on the map, presumably bosses I needed to beat). However, I kinda lost track of everything after traversing the map for hours without stumbling upon the next key progression trigger (and instead into multiple DLC areas). It's a bummer, because this is a finely crafted game to be sure. Maybe I will return to it someday.

It starts slow, and is rather drab looking at first, and with similar games flooding the market I bounced off. The Switch release got me back in, and I've played for close to 100 hours, obsessing over the art, characters and music. one of my all time faves.

Wowsers. Have you replayed it to hit that count, or is there that much stuff to see?

I absolutely adore this game.

It did take a little while to open up, but once it did the game became something truly special. It's the closest thing I've found to capture that Dark Souls feeling of both exploration and danger. While I'm playing I feel like there's something new to discover around every corner. I keep stumbling into brand new areas, but always with a feeling of tension that comes with knowing each step takes me further away from the safety of my last checkpoint. And just like with the original Dark Souls - and with the very best Metroidvanias - there are enough branching paths that I always have something I can do. When I hit a wall, I go back to a different area to explore there, and I'm usually rewarded for it with something that helps me progress in another area. I can spend hours with this game, just poking around and seeing what I can find.

I can see why this game my not be for everyone. I don't know if I'll even recommend it to a buddy of mine I was able to get hooked on the entire Dark Souls series. But I personally love games that allow you to explore and reward you for it. Hollow Knight gives you a connected, cohesive world, with fun character, great art and music, and hours of content. It has its claws in me deep. Spider-Man will just have to wait.

I literally finished Hollow Knight last week on Switch, playing exclusively in handheld mode. 26 hours playtime, 73% completion.

I enjoyed the game. It feels, looks and sounds fantastic. It's sooooo satisfying to play. I felt like it was a slow first few hours unroll you've got a couple areas explored and got your first movment abilities. The bosses I struggled most with were The Witcher Knights and The Hollow Knight. Defiantly a good game but I'm not one of the crowd that is totally smitten by it. Feel like GB never gave it a fair shake. Also that mode you unlock after finishing the game is just insanity. Who in their right mind would play that???

This is more or less my take on it. There is a lot I like about the game but it's just a little too open-ended as far as exploring goes. If it just gave a little bit more of a breadcrumb trail I'd be more likely to finish it. Trucking my way all across this huge map trying to find the one crevice I can slip into, getting there and finding out that it's just a dead end with no way to progress without an item its not clear if I have or not, rinse and repeat just sucked out all the joy that I had for the game.

My favourite Metroidvania ever, I just finished the trial of fools yesterday and I was shaking (second time I go for full completion)

I’m not blaming anyone for getting lost, but I’m surprised by people saying they can’t find where to progress. For a non 100% completion I never needed a guide to progress, I think there’s always enough paths open to you that leads to the mandatory areas, you don’t even need all mobility upgrades to finish the games (which is great I think). The backtracking can be a bit much for sure, but I accept it because it comes with how open the map becomes after the city of tears.

Best exploration game ever made; glad to hear you loved it. It definitely has a slow start; at first, it just feels like another MetroidVania. Here's the first area, then the second area; do them in order. Once the game opens up though, that's when I fell in love with it. That's when I realized it wasn't just another MV, but truly an exploration game, which most MetroidVanias are not. There are so many options, so many paths for you to choose. Some harder than others, depending on what you've already done; but all valid choices. I can't say enough good things about this game, so I'll just stop here. It's been coming up in the forums pretty often recently, and it's one of those games that I can't help but heap praise on when it comes up.

Having said many positive things, I'm finally getting to the Deepnest and that area sucks as much as I suspected.

I'm always glad to hear about somebody else falling in love with Hollow Knight. It took a few hours for the game to sink its hooks into me, but once it did I became obsessed with the game. I think it's probably the best Metroidvania ever released and is among my favorite games as well. It's one of the few games I actually went out of my to find a speedrun for, unlike most games which I just stumble onto while watching a gdq stream.

I love the game as a platformer and as an exploration game, but the bosses and the healing system completely soured me. I did find all the charms, beat all the trials, and got the true ending... but I did NOT enjoy the last third of the game. And I won't be touching godmaster.

While i did feel intentionally restricted at the start, i never really experienced this feeling of the game suddenly 'opening up'. Naturally, you get new abilities over time, but it felt pretty much par for the course of a metroidvania. What is this moment of the game opening up for people? Beating the first boss? Seeing the mask icons hit the map?

Mechanically speaking, the game is pretty linear for the first few hours; beating the boss in Forgotten Crossroads gets you Vengeful Spirit (the projectile) which really only lets you into Greenpath, beating the boss in Greenpath gets you Mothwing Cloak (the dash) which really only lets you into Fog Canyon and Fungal Wastes. But once you get the Mantis Claw (wall jump) in Fungal Wastes, it actually opens up a ton of new routes, even though the game hints that you should go to City of Tears next; most people do, but after that, City of Tears branches off into quite a few different areas since its so central, or you could backtrack into some previous zones and find some new stuff.

So at least for me, the game suddenly opening up was A) "Holy shit, there's a big cool rainy city underground for some reason?" and B) "Oh dang, now that I've reached this area and have this wall jump, it seems like there's lots of places I could go and there isn't an 'obvious' one I'm supposed to go to."

@onemanarmyy: The thing that’s different here from my experience is that the game has always more than one main area you can go to, and each of the major areas have multiple entry points.

After you get the mantis claw you can go to the city of tears, the deepnest, the howling cliff and others and they’re all pretty much doable. Each areas start to branch out in multiple ways.

Symphony of the Night was fairly good at that but most if not all modern Metroidvania have a critical path that you need to follow unless you’re actively sequence breaking. Both Guacamelee and Ori are extremely linear games with some hidden bonuses peppered around the world.

As I’ve said before, you don’t even need all the mobility upgrades in Hollow Knight to finish the game, you can miss whole section of the game and still complete it. It creates a sense that you’re discovering stuff on your own term and not going from quest marker to quest marker.

That’s my take anyway, there’s a lot more I love about the game but the map design I think is what was the most impressive to me on my first playthrough.

@csl316: I have a terrible sense of direction, awful reflexes with the boss fights, and have refused to use any wiki or anything, so lots of wandering and trial and error, plus the kids mess around sometimes.

@sethmode: Well great...now @ichthy can't reply to you or anyone ever again. Otherwise he'll ruin that glory!

On topic...I put 3 or 4 hours into this game and can't keep slogging through it. There are just too many other games for me to force myself through a game to maybe enjoy it 20 hours later. I really want to like the game because the art style and sound design are top notch. But it's so slow in the beginning and the somber tone doesn't help either. Sorry folks :|

I loved the game right from the start, it was 3 in my top 10 from last year. But I didn't finish it. I pick it up now and then and dink around but I still haven't finished it after playing 50 hours. I have no idea how close I am to the end or where I am supposed to go or what it even means to be finished.

There's definitely a definitive 'end,' but it lets you keep playing after as if nothing happened, in case you wanna replay the end or explore the whole other 50% of the game that isn't a requirement to beat it.

And I also loved the game from the first area. Controls are good, and I love the satisfying 'pop' enemies make when you hit them. My only huge criticism is that there's no preloading on control input. It's annoying to press jump 2 frames before landing and not be able to jump until you release the button and press it again. Also, I feel like the directional thresholds for determining which way you're slashing are too wide. Sounds nitpicky, but in difficult fights or platforming sections those are really annoying things to have to keep in your head. On PC I was able to modify the controls to fix most of this, but other platforms don't have the luxury.

But, definitely top game of this type for me.

I got this on PC from the kickstarter and didn't play it much, finally rebought it on Switch and have dived in. I really liked it from the start. Yeah it starts off slow and kind of confusing, but I think that aids the arc of the game. It really feels like you're some loser outsider entering this huge, terrifying place, and it makes all the upgrades feel really significant because they make such a difference in mobility and survivability. I also LOVE the mapping system. It's one of the few games I've played where it feels like you're actually exploring the world. I'm not sure how far in I am (I just got the Dream Nail), but it's becoming increasingly more open and cool. The presentation of the game is also stunning, and I'm finding the story a lot more interesting than I expected. Great game. In a lot of ways I almost feel it does the Dark Souls formula better than Dark Souls.

I feel like after playing 20 hours you don't really need the "but" in there!

@sweep: Eh, I dunno...been plenty of games where I put a lot of time in and still don't like them (look no further than my posts in your RDR2 thread haha)